


sticks and stones (and other medieval weaponry)

by shineyma



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: ARGUS!Felicity, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4193523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and responses to prompts I receive on tumblr. Some will be connected, some won't. Mostly Felicity-centric.</p><p>New on 1/7/16: Chapter 8 (the company you keep: circling)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "I don't believe you"

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: "Oliver x Felicity (it's on your ship list, it's fair game!), "I don't believe you." If you're still doing that meme, that is."

Felicity’s kind of having a bad day. It  _started_  okay, with hot, delicious coffee delivered straight to her desk by a still-apologetic Oliver (seven months as his EA and he  _still_  feels bad about his heavy-handed way of quote-unquote promoting her, as well he should) and a really satisfying phone conversation where she got to be rude to her old, incompetent supervisor in IT (who hasn’t magically become competent in the last seven months, surprise surprise), but things went downhill pretty fast.

Specifically, the part where she’s been kidnapped by some creep who somehow knows that she works for the Arrow (but not, thank goodness, who the Arrow is) is pretty annoying. Especially since he’s some weird mixture of effective and incompetent—smart enough to take her glasses and her shoes, which will make escape tricky, but dumb enough to outline basically his entire plan while staring adoringly at himself in a full-length mirror.

He’s actually kind of freaking her out with that.

After a few very boring (she won’t call them torturous because  _that_  is a word she’s been trying to cut out of her vocabulary since the first time she saw Oliver’s scars) hours, though, his flair for the dramatic turns things in her favor.

He drags her out of the chair she’s been sitting in since she got here (although his dragging efforts are kind of impeded by the fact that he forgets to unlock her handcuffs first, which— _ow_. But at least they’re off, now) and then pulls her over to the mirror to pose dramatically in front of it with her.

The effect is kind of ruined by the fact that he’s basically a big blur, but…points for effort, she guesses? Anyway, he stands behind her and holds a knife against her throat while he tells her (or, actually it seems more like he’s talking to the mirror, but whatever) how painful her death is gonna be, which would be scary if it weren’t exactly the opening she’s been waiting for.

She should really just get on with it, but maybe his theatrical tendencies are contagious, because she can’t resist a little gloating of her own first.

“This is not a good idea,” she warns him when he (finally) pauses for breath. “Seriously. In fact, it’s such a not-good idea that you might call it bad. Horrible, even. The worst idea you’ve ever had. Like, _ever_.”

“Why?” he asks. She can feel him smirk against her cheek as he continues, mockingly, “Because  _the Arrow_  will save you?”

“I mean, I was gonna go with because the Arrow has  _trained_ me,” she says—although really it’s been Sara more than Oliver, but she can’t resist the verbal symmetry. Oh, except now she feels bad for giving Oliver the credit over Sara; like  _that_  doesn’t happen enough already. She’ll make it up to her—maybe apology cupcakes? Except, oh, right, hostage situation; handle that first, Felicity. “But sure, we can go with that.”

“What?”

Felicity’s problem, as she has been told by every person who has ever tried to teach her self-defense, is that she over-thinks things. So she determinedly  _doesn’t_  think, just lets muscle memory guide her as she disarms the man, sends his knife skidding across the room, and then puts him on the floor with a few quick strikes.

It’s literally the exact process that Sara has drilled her on a  _million_  times, because they’ve practiced this exact scenario. But it turns out that doing it to an actual criminal is  _much_  more satisfying than doing it to Roy (poor Roy, she still owes  _him_  apology cupcakes for that thing with the stapler), and she allows herself a happy little skip as she hurriedly removes herself from his range.

 _Just because an opponent’s down doesn’t mean he’s out_ , Sara’s told her (also a million times). Best to keep her distance while she tries to figure out what to do with him. She could just run, but she still doesn’t have her glasses and she doesn’t see any exit signs anywhere, and the last thing she wants is to get  _lost_  inside Mr. Drama’s hideout. That would just be embarrassing.

The handcuffs are still attached to the chair, and she doesn’t think she really has the necessary upper-body strength to drag him over to it, so that’s probably out, but…

She’s just decided to try and make a run for it, even without her glasses (the guy—who, for all his monologuing, never actually introduced himself—is still on the ground, groaning) when two of the windows shatter and the door bursts in, and the room is suddenly overflowing with superheroes.

Feeling bizarrely sorry for her kidnapper (Stockholm Syndrome isn’t out of the question, although it seems kind of fast for it), she puts herself between him and Oliver, who—under his hood—is clearly wearing his murder face.

“It’s okay!” she says quickly. “I’m fine! No harm done!” She waves her hands as she speaks, then realizes that her right wrist is red and kind of swelling where the handcuffs bit into it, and quickly tucks it behind her back. “I totally took care of it already.”

“You’re okay?” Sara asks, giving her a quick once over.

“Completely,” she promises. “Barely a scratch. And I  _totally_  kicked his ass, just like you taught me! I was awesome, you should’ve seen it.”

“Sorry to miss it,” Sara smiles. It fades as she pokes Felicity’s kidnapper with her…stick (Felicity absolutely knows what that’s called, but it’s been a long day. It’ll come to her in a minute) as he starts to move. “ _You_  can stay right there.”

Oliver is doing that creepy stillness thing he does when he’s really upset, and Felicity carefully picks her way over to him (she doesn’t have shoes, but she’s pretty sure she’s far enough away from the windows not to be at risk of stepping on glass) and lays a hand on his arm.

“Hey,” she says. He doesn’t look at her. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says quietly.

She frowns at him, but she doesn’t think he notices. He’s still turned away, eyes fixed on whatever Sara is doing with Felicity’s kidnapper, and there’s so much tension in his arm that hers twinges in sympathy.

“Okay, I’m not saying that I’m not gonna be doing some serious stress eating tonight,” she admits. “And maybe it’ll be a while before I go grocery shopping by myself again, but—I’m not hurt, and I totally rescued myself. Everything’s okay. I was awesome.”

He finally turns to look at her, and he’s smiling. A little. Okay, not really, but he  _wants_  to—she can tell.

“You said that already,” he says.

“Well it’s  _true_ ,” she defends, and crosses her arms. “I think it bears repeating, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” he agrees, quietly intense, and she shifts a little in place. Somehow, the motion draws his attention to her bare feet, and he frowns. “We should get you home.”

“Yes, please,” she says, and maybe her voice wavers a little, because her kidnapping was really boring and ended happily, but it could’ve been awful. If her kidnapper were a little less dramatic and a little more  _violent_ …she shivers.

Oliver’s frown deepens, and he makes a vague gesture that must be some kind of superhero sign-language, because Roy says “On it” and disappears out one of the broken windows.

Sara and the kidnapper apparently slipped out at some point while she was distracted with Oliver, so this leaves the two of them alone.

“Where’s Digg?” she asks, mostly to get her mind off the way Oliver’s looking at her. She’s gotten pretty good at reading him by this point, but she can’t interpret  _this_  look at all. Maybe it’s the mask. Or her lack of glasses. That could be it.

“Your kidnapping was pretty public,” Oliver says. “Digg’s dealing with the police.”

Poor Digg. When it comes to Team Arrow’s dealings with the non-Detective-Lance police, he’s usually the one that gets stuck with the job. She thinks it’s mostly because he doesn’t have a cool leather outfit/mask combo to hide his identity when it comes time to storm the bad guys’ lairs, but still. It’s not exactly fair.

Maybe she says that aloud, or maybe Oliver’s just really good at reading her face, because he smiles again.

“I’ll make it up to him later,” he says (which is probably a lie). “For now, let’s just get out of here.” He frowns down at her feet again. “Where are your shoes?”

“Probably with my glasses?” she guesses.

“And where are your glasses?”

“No idea,” she says honestly. “They were gone when I woke up here.”

His mouth ticks downward at the mention of her waking up, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, bizarrely, he hands her his bow.

She blinks at it. “What am I supposed to—whoa!”

In a move straight out of a romance novel (or a fantasy which she has  _definitely_  never had before ever), Oliver sweeps her right off her feet mid-sentence. He cradles her against his chest, bridal style, and Felicity closes her eyes, clings to his bow, and concentrates on keeping her mouth shut, because there is  _no way_  that she can avoid the mother of all mortifying slips if she opens it.

“There’s a lot of broken glass,” he says, clearing his throat.

She nods mutely and, because she doesn’t have enough willpower to keep her mouth shut  _and_  resist this particularly tempting urge, rests her head on his shoulder. She thinks she feels his hold on her tighten briefly, but that might just be wishful thinking.

“Let’s get you home,” he says, softly, and Felicity closes her eyes.

If she lets herself pretend, as he carries her out of the building, that she’s in the middle of one of those fantasies that she has never, ever had…Well.

She’s had a bad day. Who could blame her?


	2. every step you take (the totally professional remix)

Felicity isn’t sure what to make of her newest directive.

It’s not that she’s been abruptly uprooted from her current assignment; that’s pretty much par for the course. As one of the very best that ARGUS’ technology division has to offer, she’s kind of a freelancer. Rather than being assigned a specific duty, she bounces around—one month working cyber defense, the next working cyber  _infiltration_ , the next digging up the dirt on ARGUS’ enemies, and so on. So she’s used to getting plucked out of one division and dropped into another without warning.

No, the issue is with the assignment itself. Because she’s used to getting some pretty weird orders without explanation, but being asked to track every move that a returned-from-the-dead billionaire makes is definitely a new record, randomness-wise.

The way she figures, Oliver Queen just spent five years on a deserted island. His every move is probably going to involve indoor plumbing, fast food, and—if he’s smart—some really extensive therapy. Tracking him seems completely pointless, especially when taking into account the fact that coming back from the dead shot him up from C List to A List celebrity—at least within his hometown of Starling City—and the bloggers are definitely going to be on his tail.

But ARGUS pays her the big bucks to ask questions of  _other people_ , not themselves, so she shrugs and goes with it.

Still, it continues to puzzle her.

At least until about her second day on the job, at which point she realizes that Oliver Queen is running around his city dressed in green leather, shooting people with arrows and  _stealing from the rich_ , what the  _hell_.

“Am I being Punk’d?” she asks her supervisor. “Is that what’s happening here?”

Her supervisor rolls her eyes.

“Because I feel like our work is the kind of classified where involving reality shows is a bad idea,” she continues. “Have you cleared this with the big bosses? I mean, nothing against Ashton Kutcher, but I don’t wanna get disappeared just because he thinks humiliating people on camera makes for good television.” She pauses. “Is Punk’d even on the air anymore?”

“You’re not being Punk’d,” her supervisor—used to Felicity’s tendency to get distracted by her own questions—says patiently. “The assignment is legitimate. Continue to monitor and report on Queen as ordered.”

She has  _so many questions_  but, again, she’s not supposed to ask them of ARGUS. So she continues to track, monitor, and report on Oliver Queen. As ordered.

And, well, here’s the thing. The little Robin Hood Vigilante thing he’s got going is pretty interesting, albeit  _weird_. But even with the added crazy, there’s only so long you can spend tracking a person’s every move before it starts to get boring.

So, to keep herself entertained, she starts scoring him on how he handles his secret identity.

At first, just being on this little crusade of his means he’s way in the negative, because (and she’s well aware of the hypocrisy in her thinking) laws exist for a reason and his flagrant disregard for them is  _not_ cute. Then she looks into Starling City’s crime rate and mentally apologizes, because  _wow_  are things bad in the Glades.

She can’t say she agrees with his methods, but considering who she works for, she has even  _less_  room to talk there. So he gets bumped back up to starting at zero, as is only fair. 

Then she starts scoring in earnest.

He’s apparently decided to go with “drunken playboy” as a cover, which gains him points for how easily everyone buys it but also loses him a few, because it’s really tacky. He gets points for maintaining a secret base away from his house (slash ridiculously oversized manor), but then loses them all when that base turns out to be in the basement of one of his family’s properties (because, really?).

The completely pathetic attempt at cyber security on display in his secret base  _should_  lose him even more points, but it makes her job a lot easier, so she lets him keep them.

When scoring him on his secret identity issues gets old (she’s monitoring his phone calls and texts, and he loses  _so many points_  for his terrible excuses), she starts scoring the crusade itself.

Except scoring the crusade means she needs to know more about it—more than just what he’s up to. It means she needs to do research on the people he’s going after.

And once she reaches  _that_  point, Felicity really doesn’t think she can be blamed for the fact that she starts to get  _invested_. Starling City is apparently full to bursting with complete creeps—who knew?—and Oliver Queen, who by day pretends to  _be_ one of them, is the only person really doing anything about it.

Or trying to, at least.

He’s…not always as effective as he could be, is the thing. His tech skills are pretty good for someone who spent five years on a deserted island (supposedly, at least; that lie has kind of run its course for Felicity, since she’s pretty sure that deserted islands don’t come with  _archery lessons_ ), but they’re not _great_. Certainly nowhere near her level—although that’s a given—and not always on the same level as the cyber security that the guys he’s going after have.

Especially once word starts spreading that some Vigilante is hitting the rich people in Starling City where it hurts (their bank accounts), because suddenly, they’re all beefing up their cyber security.

(For certain values of  _beefing up_ , that is. Seriously, it’s almost adorable how  _basic_  everything is. If she wanted to, Felicity could clear out every one-percenter in the city in like, twenty minutes. But that’s the kind of thing that gets her vacation days taken away, so she refrains.)

Anyway, Queen’s mostly decent tech skills aren’t always up to the challenge. And even though he has an  _entire IT department_  at his disposal, well, most of  _them_  aren’t all that great, either.

So. Here’s Felicity, monitoring (and, still, reporting on) every move Queen makes. Felicity with her first class tech skills. Felicity who is now  _really invested_  in this weird crusade she’s watching. Felicity who is finding it  _physically painful_ , deep down in her soul, to watch Queen fail so badly against the firewall his target of the week is using.

Maybe she gives him a little help.

It’s definitely not the smartest thing she’s ever done. Her orders don’t  _expressly_  forbid her from interfering with Queen’s life and/or hobbies, but it’s totally implied. And the fact that said interference takes the form of illegal hacking…

Well. If word gets out, Felicity’s going to lose more than just her vacation days.

Still, it’s not like it should be a  _surprise_  that she does it. This is exactly the kind of thing that got her working for ARGUS in the first place, after all, and she is  _absolutely_  going to remind them of that if she ever gets called on the carpet.

Not that she will. After all, it’s just the one nudge.

And it’s not even that much of a nudge! A prod, at best. All she does is slip a tiny metaphorical typo into the code for the firewall he’s up against. Queen really does most of the work, finding and exploiting the hole her nudge—prod—created.

It’s all on him, really.

And word’s not very likely to get out, anyway. She’s pretty sure Queen didn’t even notice the help she gave him (which, rude. Absolutely the best possible outcome, granted, but still. A girl likes to have her work appreciated), and it’s not like she’s going to be reporting on  _herself_.

It’s just her little secret. And if tracking Queen while he takes down the scumbag in question is even more satisfying than usual, she chalks it up to his daring escape through a twentieth-story window.

She’s just happy not to be bored. That’s all.


	3. the company you keep: Introductions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was talk on tumblr of an AU in which Oliver returns from Lian Yu to find that Tommy is married to Felicity, aka ARGUS' top hacker. 
> 
> Then absentlyabbie asked: "Smoaking Billionaires ARGUS!Felicity AU (do you have a name for this AU?); introductions"

“Well, that was fun.”

“Sure,” Felicity agrees, dropping her earrings on the dresser. “If by  _fun_  you mean awkward, uncomfortable, and weirdly intense, that is.”

Tommy sighs and slumps back on the bed. “Okay, so it could’ve gone better.” He frowns and props himself on his elbows. “Maybe I should’ve broken it to him more gently.”

“Is there a gentle way to tell your resurrected best friend that you got married while he was dead?” she wonders. She braces herself against the dresser for balance as she removes her shoes, pondering it. “I mean, I guess you could’ve just pointedly kept your left hand directly in his line of sight for as long as it took him to notice your ring—”

“You mean like the exact opposite of how you spent three weeks hiding your ring from your mom when we got engaged? Even though I deliberately proposed  _while_  she was visiting so you could tell her in person?”

“—but I really don’t think the method of delivery for the whole marriage bomb was the problem,” she continues, ignoring his interjection. “I think he just didn’t like me.”

“Well, that can’t be it,” Tommy says dismissively. “What’s not to like? You’re beautiful and charming and a literal genius.”

“Oh, am I?” she asks, trying to hold back a smile.

“Yep,” he says. “And you have  _great_  taste in men.” He shrugs exaggeratedly. “Clearly you’re perfect.”

“My taste in men makes me perfect?”

“No, but it doesn’t hurt,” he grins. “Proof of your excellent judgment.”

“Actually, you’d really think it would work in my favor,” she muses, digging through the dresser drawer in search of clean pajamas. She’s coming up empty, which is…not really a surprise, considering all the chaos of the last few days. She can’t even remember the last time she did laundry. (And of course she can’t complain to Tommy about it, because it’ll only start round two hundred and fifteen of the  _we have people for that_  debate, which is the last thing this night needs.) “I mean, I liked you enough to marry you. Shouldn’t that win me points with your best friend?”

“Not necessarily,” he says. “It didn’t win you any points with Thea. Which I still don’t get, by the way.”

Considering the fact that Thea’s initial dislike of her stemmed from the then-fourteen-year-old’s massive crush on Tommy, that’s a subject she’d rather avoid. She did, after all, pinky-swear never to let Tommy ever learn about said crush.

“It’s a mystery,” she says, lightly, intending to move the conversation away from Thea. Then she actually considers her words and frowns. “I hate mysteries.”

“I know you do,” Tommy says patiently.

“They bug me,” she continues, abandoning her search for pajamas and dropping onto the bed next to him. “They need to be solved.”

“Yeah? And how are you planning on solving Oliver?” he asks, rolling onto his side to face her. “Because let me tell you, women have been trying for years, and none have succeeded. Ever.”

“Was there really that much to solve?” she asks, momentarily distracted. “He always seemed pretty simple. I mean, that thing with the police car—”

“There’s more to Oliver than just the drunken party boy,” he interrupts. He’s grinning, but his eyes are serious. “Just like there was more to me.”

“Was?” she teases gently, hoping to erase the look in his eyes. She hates that getting Oliver back didn’t ease any of the pain of the five years Tommy spent mourning him, as much as she understands why. “You’re  _still_  a drunken party boy.”

“But a monogamous one,” he points out with an angelic smile.

“True, and it’s a great look for you.” She leans in and kisses him quickly, then rolls off the bed and heads for the closet. “And in answer to your question, I have resources that those hypothetical other women didn’t.”

“Wait.” He sits up. “Tell me you’re not planning on hacking Oliver.”

“Hacking is such an ugly word,” she says as she ducks into the closet. She’s pretty much given up on pajamas, at this point, but she needs the excuse not to look at Tommy right now. He’ll give her that _look_  and she’ll end up giving in and promising not to dig through every shred of electronic evidence Oliver’s left since his return from his accidental island getaway, and that’s one thing she can’t do.

“Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?” he asks.

“You like me extreme,” she counters. As a diversion, it’s weak, and he doesn’t even bother to acknowledge it.

“Look, Oliver’s been gone a long time, and a lot’s changed. Give him some time to adjust, okay? Get to know him a little. Let’s save cyber-crime as a last resort.”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on, what are you even gonna do if you find something?” he asks. “It’s not like you can confront him about whatever you find—if there even is anything to find,  _which_  I doubt—without telling him you’re a hacker. And last I checked, that was a state secret.”

Felicity’s work with ARGUS isn’t  _precisely_  a state secret, but it  _is_  classified. Highly classified. In the  _I could tell you but I’d have to kill you_  sense, something that Tommy had pronounced  _really sexy_  when they first started dating and has continued to accept with good grace. He’s been totally cool about the fact that she can’t tell him anything about her work beyond the basics, and she loves him for it.

But it’s inconvenient, too, because there are things he doesn’t understand—things he doesn’t  _know_.

Felicity can’t tell him that she doesn’t think that her ARGUS work  _is_  a secret from Oliver. She has no idea how he could possibly know, but something about the comment he made while Tommy was in the bathroom, that snarky little aside about  _the company you keep_ , with an emphasis on the word company…

“Felicity?” Tommy prompts.

She sighs. “All right.” She leaves the closet and joins him on the bed again, draping herself against him without concern for the state of her very expensive dress. “Since you asked so nicely.”

“Thank you,” he says, and kisses her. “Just give him some time to get to know you, okay? Trust me, he’ll love you in no time.”

She murmurs something non-committal and lets him distract her, putting talk of Oliver aside in favor of much more enjoyable activities. (There are so many benefits to marrying a reformed playboy. Felicity has expounded upon them at great length—more than once in public, to Tommy’s amusement.)

But she doesn’t forget the conversation, or her suspicions.  _Or_  what her suspicions mean.

ARGUS’ work is supposed to remain top secret. There are protocols for what to do if she reports that she suspects the secret’s been compromised. They’re not very pretty. And somehow, she can’t imagine that Oliver being kidnapped and held for interrogation on her word will do much to improve his opinion of her.

On the bright side, considering  _just_  how terribly dinner went…it probably can’t make it worse, either.


	4. "Who did this to you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "Who did this to you?" with Olicity, please?

It’s not that Felicity really thought she could  _hide_  the damage from Oliver, because of course she didn’t. For someone who is occasionally so oblivious that she’s more than once been tempted to hit him over the head with his own bow, he’s annoyingly observant the rest of the time. If it doesn’t have to do with emotions (and even sometimes when it does), very little gets past him.

So she knew she couldn’t hide it. She was just hoping that it would take him longer than three seconds to notice it, that’s all.

Unfortunately, she’s out of luck. She arrives at the foundry exactly on time, and she’s barely reached the bottom of the stairs before he’s  _right there_ , tipping her chin up to examine the bruising on her cheek. (Her concealer is apparently not doing its job at all. She’ll have to find a new one.)

“Who did this to you?” he asks quietly.

She studies him in return, taking in the set lines of his face and considering the frankly terrifying undertone to his words, and decides there’s only one thing for it.

“Did what?” she asks innocently.

“ _Felicity_.”

“I love it when you say my name like that,” she says—and then bites her tongue, because that was a thought that was supposed to stay  _inside_  her head. But this moment calls for a distraction anyway, so she decides to run with it. “Or hate it. I can never decide, honestly. Sometimes it’s both, which is just confusing, and it’s never neither, which is even weirder. I mean, it’s my  _name_ , right? I’ve been hearing it all my life, people use it all the time, but somehow when  _you_  say it—”

“Felicity,” he repeats, a little more firmly, and she winces.

He’s not smiling. He always smiles when she babbles.

Not good.

“Oliver,” she says, trying to mimic his tone—and failing. She just doesn’t have the register to growl like that, more’s the pity.

“You need to tell me who hurt you,” he says. He’s still got her chin in a gentle grip, and combined with the intense look in his eyes, she’s kind of getting the shivers.

It’s distracting.

“And I will,” she promises, gently pushing his hand away. “Just as soon as you stop wearing your murder face.”

He scowls.

“Take a deep breath,” she encourages, dodging around him and heading for her desk. “Do some ridiculous, shirt-optional exercises. Scare the crap out of a few scumbags. And, in a week or two, once you’ve calmed down, I’ll be glad to tell you exactly what happened.”

“Or you could tell me now,” Oliver suggests, obviously reaching for patience. “And I can take care of it.”

“Or I could just not tell you at all,” she counters. “That would work, too.”

“No,” he says flatly. “It wouldn’t.”

“See?” she asks with a bright smile. “A week or two doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?”

“Felicity—”

“You’re going to be late, by the way,” she interrupts, gesturing pointedly to one of her screens, where Sara’s GPS tracker places her nearly at the docks. “If you don’t hurry, Sara won’t leave anyone for you to arrow.” She drops her voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “And just between you and me, you _really_  look like you need to shoot somebody.”

“Felicity,” he tries again.

“Are you really gonna make Sara do all the work herself?” she demands. “Without any back-up at all? What if one of them gets the drop on her?”

She silently apologizes to the absent Sara for the suggestion that a few run-of-the-mill scumbags could  _possibly_  be a threat to her, because that’s just ridiculous—but, as a diversion, it works.

Oliver mutters under his breath in what she’s pretty sure is Chinese, then gives her a sharp look.

“This isn’t over,” he warns.

“It never is,” she says, a little glumly. “Now, go already! Sara might need you.”

He’s up the stairs and out the door in thirty seconds flat, and she settles into her chair with a relieved sigh. Digg, who’s been leaning against her desk and doing an excellent impersonation of a statue this whole time, echoes her.

“Thanks,” he says, crossing his arms. “But you know you’ve only delayed the inevitable, right? He’s still gonna kill me.”

“Probably,” she admits, sparing him a smile even as she brings up CCTV coverage of the docks. “But if I wait until the bruise fades to tell him, he might at least make it quick?”

“I can only hope,” he mutters.

“Sorry, Digg,” she says, patting him on the arm. “Any last requests?”

“Yeah,” he says, pushing away from the desk. “Next time you need someone to spar with? Ask Roy.”


	5. "You were going to die"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "Olicity, either "You were going to die" or "I've got this completely under control!"(:"

Felicity spends a lot of time controlling herself around Oliver.

(Not that anyone would ever guess it, what with the mortifying stuff that’s always coming out of her mouth, but seriously—this is Felicity being restrained.)

She doesn’t  _want_  to control herself—she doesn’t  _want_  to hold back—but she does. Oliver made his choice, and his choice was  _no_ , and she needs to respect that, even if he’s being kind of a jerk about it.

Well, more than kind of.  He’s actually being a complete ass, acting like  _she’s_  the one who came up with this totally nonsensical idea that he can’t date her  _and_  be the Arrow, or that there’s some mythical _normal life_  waiting just across the street for her, and he’s the only thing holding her back from it.

It actually kind of makes her really mad, which is helpful; controlling herself around him’s a lot easier when she keeps all of his—his  _nonsense_  at the front of her mind.

Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Everything’s so screwed up. Sara is dead, Malcolm Merlyn  _isn’t_ , and Oliver seems to be trying his hardest to get  _himself_  dead, which is not only stupid but also extremely inconsiderate. He can’t  _do_  that—can’t tell her he loves her and then pull back and shove her away and keep trying to get himself  _killed_ with ridiculous stunts.

It’s not fair.

And maybe— _maybe_ —Felicity loses her temper a little bit. Maybe he’s about three seconds away from getting stabbed— _again_ —and she decides enough is enough. Maybe she hacks into the security system of the building he’s fighting in and sets off all the sprinklers.

It  _saves his life_. So what if he has to drip his way back to Verdant? That’s what he gets for being  _stupid_.

But maybe Felicity miscalculates.

“Felicity,” Oliver says, and he’s using that  _tone_ , but he’s also stripping off the black shirt he wears under his jacket and  _wow_  does he look good shirtless and wet.

Did she say that out loud?

A quick peek at Oliver’s face proves that it’s still annoyed, with no sign of that little smile he gets whenever she sticks her foot in her mouth. So that’s a relief.

But it’s also  _not_ , because  _come on_.

“You were going to die,” she says. It comes out a little less angry and a little more emotional than she means it to, but whatever. So she gets emotional over the man she—the man she  _can’t have_ —almost dying. Sue her. “I had to do something.”

“I wasn’t going to die,” Oliver says, all strained patience. “It was just a fight, Felicity. I’ve been in a lot of them.”

“Funnily enough, I’m actually aware of that,” she snaps. “I’m also aware of what happened the  _last_  time you got stabbed, so forgive me if I wasn’t up to letting it happen again.”

His face goes soft, which is actually somehow worse than the annoyance. “Felicity—”

“You almost died!” she says. She has a white-knuckled grip on the arms of her chair, trying to keep herself in place instead of running over to him and—she doesn’t even know. Kissing him? Hitting him? It could go either way. “You almost  _died_  and I couldn’t do anything about it, but this time I could. So I did.”

Oliver’s doing that thing he does with his hand, rubbing his fingers together the way he does when he’s not sure what to say, and all she can think about is those fingers on her neck, the day he came back—when she threw herself at him and hugged him as hard as she could and totally failed at not crying.

She kind of wants to cry right now.

She turns away from him in her chair, which is a mistake, because as soon as her back is turned he ninjas his way over, crossing the lair without making a single sound, and his next words come from really, really close.

“I can’t promise you I’m not going to die,” he admits, lowly, and only his hand landing on her shoulder at the exact same time keeps her from jumping at his sudden proximity. “But I can promise that I am  _always_  going to do my best to come back to you, Felicity.”

There he goes again with the romantic-sounding declarations. A girl could get some serious mixed signals in this basement.

“Okay?” he asks, squeezing her shoulder gently. His hand is warm, and she hasn’t forgotten that he’s shirtless. Probably it’s for the best if she doesn’t look at him. “Is that…enough?”

He sounds…she doesn’t know what he sounds. She doesn’t know what he’s feeling right now—which is fair, since she doesn’t know what  _she’s_  feeling.

But what else is new?

“I guess it’ll have to be,” she says.


	6. "That is quite possibly the ugliest sweater known to man"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a five-sentence fic meme, in which the prompter provided the first sentence and I wrote the next five (plus. It was usually a lot more than five.)

_Anonymous asked: "That is quite possibly the ugliest sweater known to man."_

Oliver’s eyebrow twitches in a way that suggests he agrees, but is determined not to admit it. “My sister bought this for me.”

“Have you done something to upset her, lately?” Felicity asks, frowning. “Because I’m  _pretty_  sure she’s pranking you. Thea has much better taste than–than  _that_.”

He looks down at his sweater, brow furrowing like this option hadn’t occurred to him at all, and she just really can’t with him.

“You should take it off,” she says. “And I’m not just saying that because I want to see you shirtless, because let’s be honest, that happens often enough without my input. I just–I’m really offended by that sweater, Oliver. I’m offended a  _lot_.”

“It’s a sweater,” he says mildly, but he’s already stripping it off, so she returns happily to her work.

(She also makes a mental note to find out what he did to upset Thea and help him fix it ASAP, because if she’s gone as far as sartorial revenge, it must be really bad this time. And they have enough enemies without adding Oliver’s frankly terrifying sister to the list.)


	7. Felicity saves Oliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "hello, saw your fic on ao3 - amazing by the way! - If I may offer a prompt? I would love to see Felicity rescuing Oliver for a change. Like she did with Barry against the bee hacker...with less bee puns ;) Thank you"

“Okay, I’ve sealed off the panic room. Nothing’s getting in—and I mean  _nothing_. No poison gas, no bugs, not the ittiest bittiest speck of dust. This panic room is insane. And expensive, I bet. Do you know how  _difficult_  it is to actually seal off a room like that? I mean, it sounds simple in theory, but—”

“Felicity.” Oliver’s voice cuts right through her ramble, and if his tone’s any indication, he knows  _exactly_  what prompted it. Bummer. “Would oxygen be one of those things that isn’t getting in?”

“Um,” she says. “Maybe?”

“ _Felicity_.”

“Hey, now, mister, don’t take that tone with me! I’m doing the best I can here, okay, it’s not  _my_  fault that you decided to go a-Arrowing—” she makes a mental note not to make that joke again; it just sounds like she’s stuttering and totally undermines her righteous fury “—without, oh, I don’t know,  _alerting your partners_   _first_!”

Digg’s hand lands on her shoulder and squeezes, which is her first indication that maybe the end of that rant fell more on the panicky side of the emotional scale than she meant it to.

Her second indication is Oliver’s heavy sigh.

“It was just supposed to be recon,” he says, which she knows is as close to an apology as she’s ever gonna get from him. (Especially if he dies, which—no. No no no. He’s not allowed to do that, she’s already been very clear.)

“Yeah, and how’s that working out for you?” she asks, a little snappishly. It’s good, though, letting her mouth stay occupied while she digs through the specs for Rivard’s security system. 

The poison gas was a surprise—definitely not a standard feature—but now that she  _knows_  about it (thanks to Oliver’s not-at-all-panicked-this-is-my-calm-tone message, delivered literally  _as_  the poison gas was filling the hallway he was in), she can spot references to it, buried behind some A+ obfuscating language.

And of course she’s got all the details on the panic room she directed Oliver to.

“Anything?” Digg asks, filling the silence like the excellent, much-better-than-Oliver friend and partner he is.

When it comes to the vigilante stuff, silence makes her nervous. She’s never (or, well, hardly ever) on-site with the guys, so the comms are her primary way of making sure they’re not  _dead_. Cameras help too, obviously, but cameras come with blind spots—plus there’s that whole trying-not-to-get-caught-on-film thing. 

Although honestly, Oliver’s really, really bad at that. She blames his paparazzi-laden childhood; the instinct to seek out the spotlight is laid in  _deep_.

…Okay, that was unfair of her.

Not as unfair as Oliver going out and trying to get himself  _killed_  without telling them first, though. She refuses to feel guilty.

“Okay,” she says, frantically scanning the documents on her screen. “The good news is, the poison gas should dissipate pretty fast—which, obviously, it’s not like he can just have an entire floor of his building brimming with poisoned air. That’s gotta be against OSHA regs.”

Oliver rolls his eyes. There are no cameras in the panic room and she wouldn’t be able to see his eyes even if there were, what with the whole hood thing he’s got going on, but she doesn’t need to see him to know he’s rolled his eyes. She can  _sense_  it.

Which, rude. She’s not the one who went and got herself trapped by  _poison gas_  like some sidekick in a badly-written superhero movie. Honestly. Who even  _uses_  poison gas?

“And the bad news?” Digg asks calmly—but it’s the super-tense kind of calm that usually ends with Oliver getting yelled at. Felicity’s okay with that.

“No bad news, just better news,” she says, brightly, as she hits on exactly what she was looking for. “Because technically the oxygen in the panic room should run out before the poison dissipates, but because  _I_  am a genius, I can help things along.”

The only response from Oliver is slight exhale, which actually says a lot. He’s totally been worrying, hasn’t he?

“Do it,” he orders.

“Well, duh,” she says, even as she burrows her way further into Rivard’s security system. She likes that, burrows. It sounds so much comfier than  _hacks_. “But it’s not gonna be  _easy_ , you know. I’m literally making the system do the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do.  _And_  I’m doing it without raising any flags. And—”

“Thank you, Felicity,” Oliver cuts in, and she makes a face at the screen in front of her.

“Well there’s no need to be  _snippy_ ,” she tells him. “I’d like to remind you, again, that this is entirely your fault and I’ve come in—out of the goodness of my heart!—on my night off,  _just_  to save your life.” A horrible thought (well, an obvious thought, but she’s managed to ignore it until now, distracted as she’s been by the whole worrying-about-death thing) suddenly strikes her. “I bet my pizza’s cold by now.”

Pizza getting cold isn’t usually something to write home about, but this is no ordinary pizza. It’s from Milano’s, which has the absolute  _best_  pizza in Starling City—possibly even the tristate area—and, accordingly, comes with a four-hour waiting period. Five, on weekends. She spent  _hours_  looking forward to that pizza, and now?

Well, now she’s probably displacing her nervous tension onto her dinner, but still. The point remains.

“I’ll buy you another one,” he promises, and the smile she can hear in his voice has  _her_  smiling, too, before she can stop herself. Ugh. He’s so unfair.

“For this, you should buy me a freaking franchise,” she says, and then pauses. Would he—? “Um. Please don’t buy me a franchise.”

Before he can say anything, there’s a reassuring double beep from her computer, and Digg—still leaning over her in a surprisingly comforting way—tenses.

“Was that a good sound?” he asks uneasily.

“Yep,” she says, and claps once. Damn, she’s good. “The air’s clear, Oliver. It’s safe to leave the panic room.”

“…And how do I do that, exactly?”

Oh, right. For a second she’s tempted to leave him in there, just to teach him a lesson (now that the poison’s gone, she could open the vents and, theoretically, leave him there for hours), but she decides to be the bigger person.

“Through the door,” she says, unlocking it with a few quick keystrokes. “How else?”

“Thank you, Felicity,” he says—a lot less sarcastically, this time. Like, a lot a lot. In fact, there’s this fondness in how he says it that brings an answering warmth to her cheeks, and—is she blushing?

She risks a peek at Digg and is met with one of his Looks.

Oh, yeah, she’s totally blushing.

“You’re welcome,” she—definitely doesn’t squeak. “Now, day saved, and I’m trusting you to get yourself out of there and home in one piece, okay? Because I’ll be really annoyed if I have to save you  _again_.”

“Noted,” he says, still in that tone.

“Okay, goodnight,” she says hurriedly, and mutes her comm. “Shut up, Digg.”

“Didn’t say a word.” He holds up his hands. “Not one.”

He also doesn’t say a word when Oliver returns bearing a Milano’s pizza exactly the way she likes it—but then, he really doesn’t have to.

His Look says it all.


	8. the company you keep: circling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> absentlyabbie asked: "that-au-where-tommy-and-felicity-are-married-when-oliver-comes-back-from-lian-yu, circling"
> 
> This takes place in the same verse as [chapter three (introductions)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4193523/chapters/9472071) in this collection. You might want to read that first.

“May I have this dance, Mrs. Merlyn?”

The question is so unexpected that Felicity very nearly chokes on her wine. Oliver’s smile widens.

She’s tempted to tell him where he can stick his invitation—he’s been a complete (if subtle) jerk to her for literally their entire acquaintance—but the smile Tommy’s wearing stops her. He’s so eager to see them get along, and she hates to disappoint him when he’s obviously taking this as a good sign.

(Which is weird; shouldn’t he know his own best friend well enough to realize when he’s being an  _asshole_?)

He looks so  _pleased…_ and suddenly she realizes the true depths of Oliver’s evil. If she agrees to dance with him, she’ll be stuck with him until the end of the next song, but if she refuses,  _she_  looks like the bad guy. He can be all  _well I’ve tried to get along with your beautiful, talented, genius wife who I for some unimaginable reason despise, but_ she _won’t play nice_ , and she’ll have no defense that isn’t  _I know it_ looked _like your recently-returned-from-the-dead best friend, who you’ve spent our entire marriage missing, was being nice, but actually he was being a total jerkface_.

Damn it.

“Of course,” she says, and sets her glass aside to accept Oliver’s offered hand. “Back in a minute, Tommy.”

“Take your time,” he says happily.

Felicity’ll give Oliver one thing: he’s really good at walking through crowds. She always feels awkward trying to elbow past dancing couples at these galas; it’s like some twisted fancy-dress version of bumper cars, and there’s really no elegant way to manage it. Tommy always pulls it off fine, having quick thirty-second conversations with everyone they pass because he’s ridiculous like that, but Oliver doesn’t even have to  _try_. It’s like magic: a tiny path clears for them without any effort on his part.

It’s totally unfair.

Of course, it also means they reach an empty spot on the dance floor in record time. Which means they’re  _dancing_  in record time, and now they’re at the part where she’s supposed to make polite conversation. Usually she’s pretty good at that kind of thing (well, good-ish; her mouth does tend to get away from her), but this is  _Oliver_. She doesn’t even  _want_  to make polite conversation. In fact, she’d really like to be super rude to him.

Tommy, she reminds herself. This is for Tommy.

Searching her mind for something that won’t lead to a) demands as to  _why_  he hates her or b) a mortifying observation/babble about how  _solid_  he is for a guy who just spent five years living off a diet of coconuts and possibly fish, she eventually lands on what she hopes is a safe bet.

“So,” she says, “how’s the club coming along?”

“Fine,” Oliver says, with what’s  _obviously_  a fake smile. “We’re just about ready to start hiring staff.”

“Really?” she asks. “Tommy mentioned there was a problem with the lighting.”

“It’s been fixed,” he dismisses. “What about you? How’s work?”

Uh oh. She really should have thought of the reciprocal rules of polite questions before starting this conversation. Generally she tries not to invite questions about her job, since the whole _classified_ thing tends not to go over well.

“It’s fine.”

“Hmm.” Oliver’s smile never wavers, but his eyes…well, she’s not quite sure _how_ to describe what his eyes do, but it is way creepy. She tries not to shiver too obviously. “And what is it you do, again?”

“I work in computer engineering,” she says. “For the government.”

“ _Really_ ,” he drawls. “What part of the government?”

There it is again: that tone. He says  _government_  the same way he said  _the company you keep_  the night they met—the same way he’s said a dozen other things since. It’s not subtle and it’s not meant to be (or at least she  _hopes_  it’s not meant to be; if it is, she’s gonna have to pity him for how bad he is at it), but it’s also nothing  _concrete_.

ARGUS has protocols about this kind of thing, strict rules covering what an employee should do when they believe their connection to ARGUS has been discovered. Those protocols aren’t pleasant, and while she can’t  _not_  call in when she’s been discovered…

All she’s got to go on is Oliver’s tone. She  _suspects_  that he knows about her real job, but she can’t be  _certain_. And no matter how much he hates her, no matter how  _annoying_  he is with his constant not-liking her, he’s still Tommy’s best friend. She doesn’t wanna subject him to ARGUS unless she absolutely  _has_  to.

Unfortunately, she’s not all that great at subtle, herself. So far, she hasn’t been able to corner Oliver into admitting what he knows.

“The part that uses computers,” she says flippantly. “Why the interest?”

He smiles insincerely. “Just making conversation.”

“Uh huh.” Felicity can’t think of a single way to prod him further, at least not without possibly incriminating herself. “So…how’s Thea?”

His eyes narrow, and his hold on her tightens slightly. Possibly. She might be imagining it; she’s very aware of the weight and the warmth of his hand on her hip, and the discomfort of that awareness might be making her paranoid.

Not that it’s _unusual_ to be aware of it, of course. Not at all. They’re dancing, after all, and the whole following-his-lead thing is a lot easier when she’s actually paying attention to the signals he gives her. There’s nothing weird about it.

“Why?” he asks.

On the other hand, there’s something _very_ weird about _that_.

“What do you mean, why?” she asks, a little incredulously. “I haven’t seen her in a while and I’m wondering how she’s doing. Why is that something to question?”

“Why is me asking what part of the government you work for something to question?” Oliver counters.

…Crap. He’s got her there. “It’s not.”

“Neither is this,” he says, a little smugly.

Once again, she’s stuck. She can’t pursue his overreaction to her innocent question about Thea without inviting possibly completely _not_ innocent questions about her line of work.

(Which is unfortunate, because she’s _really_ curious about that overreaction.)

On the bright side, Oliver is apparently stuck, too, because he doesn’t say anything else, even as the silent stretches out awkwardly. The hand holding hers flexes a little, calluses pressing into the back of her hand.

…Which is, again, a totally normal thing to notice.

“So?” she asks eventually. “How _is_ Thea?”

“She’s fine.”

Abrupt, dismissive, and still with the narrowed eyes—yeah, there’s definitely something up with his reaction. Too bad she can’t just come out and _ask_ him what his deal is.

This whole subterfuge thing sucks.

“And your mother and Walter?” she asks.

“Them too.”

Okay, then.

For lack of anything else, she’s trying to remember the name of the Queens’ housekeeper (Tommy adores and is adored by her, but Felicity’s only met her once or twice) when she’s saved by the end of the song. She totally deserves an extra glass of wine for how natural and unhurried she manages to make pulling away from him look.

“Thanks for the dance, Oliver,” she says politely.

“My pleasure,” he (blatantly!) lies.

She walks back to her and Tommy’s table alone. Being spared Oliver’s company is worth the trouble of awkwardly edging through the crowd.

**Author's Note:**

> I won't guarantee a fill, but if you want to send me a prompt, you're welcome to do so [here](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/ask).


End file.
